Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Yesica S. Mena
English 1A
Short Essay #4: “Loot or Find: Fact or Tramp” by Cheryl I. Harris and Devon W. Carbado
In the essay, “Loot or Find: Fact or Tramp”, the authors Cheryl I. Harris and Devon W.
Carbado report that in American society there exists some “frames” embedded in our
subconscious that pre-disposes us to assume that the African American people has a propensity
to commit criminal activities more frequently, and, as a consequence, society treats them as a
group of less importance. The authors state that the way we analyze facts are even more
important than the facts themselves because those “frames” shape our judgment. Harris and
Carbado explain that society tends to believe that race is not a determining factor in our
responses; they use the term “color blindness” to name this behavior of assuming that all racial
problemes were solved with the Civil Right movement and rejecting racism as a common
occurrence, and, as a result, we justify our actions with something other than racism; we blame it
on the Black community‘s behavior. The authors express that Hurricane Katrina, in New
Orleans, was a good opportunity to question ourselves about racial inequalities that sometime
was veiled by color blindness; when the whole country witnesses how the majority of the victims
of that natural disaster were black poor Americans left behind by the government as if they were
irrelevant. Harris and Carbado state that even though some concerns raised up about this
situation observed in New Orleans, for the majority of the white people in America, race wasn’t
a factor to explain the lack of help to the Black community in that desperate situation displaying
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how color blindness lets us see their suffering, but prevents us from connect that suffering to
racism. The authors claim that for us, is easy to process the idea of a black person committing a
crime. They use the example of the controversy over two images displaying the exact same
action where the photo of the black man was presented like if he was “looting” a store for food
while the photo of white people described they as “finding” food, both of them in the aftermath
of Katrina. Harris and Carbado expand their argument explaining how these assumptions
contributed to the creation of the stereotype of black criminality. The authors explain that those
beliefs added to the notion of “law and order”, were responsible for how the government
responded to the Katrina events; they claim that the reports of violence perpetrated by African
Americas were exaggerated, and, at the same time, crimes against them were underreported. The
authors report that this intricate situation allows to perceive the Black community as
predominantly violent, but not like victims of that violence. Harris and Carbado conclude that,
based on the events, facts can depict a situation, but not always can explain it because, as a
society, the frames of color blindness, law and order and black criminality shape our judgment
even before we receive those facts, and that we need to look outside those frames to have a better
I agree with the argument put forward by Harris and Carbado about the frames that pre-
dispose us to make judgments without investigating the facts presented to us, especially when a
racial group is concerned. The authors reflect about how the disaster inflicted by Hurricane
Katrina in New Orleans, especially in the poor areas inhabited vastly by African Americans, was
a good example on how those frames influenced the way the government response to the events,
and how the whole situation was depicted to the American society in order to justify that
response. We can still see that same behavior every day now; since the frequent accusations of
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police brutality exerted on members of minority groups, to the effort of the media to justify those
abuses appealing to the stereotype of criminality that surround the members of those
communities. In the essay, Harris and Carbado show how American society, dominated mostly
by white people, fails to associate their response with the racism that still exist and they deny.
These ideas coincide with the argument displayed in “The Case for Reparations” by Ta’Nehisi
Coates where he describe how Black communities where forced to live on poor areas with high
crime rates due to the redlining policies from government, and this situation condemns them to
be the victims of that violence that American society deplores, but does not allow them to
denounce.